The Moment You Compare God to Anything in this World, He is not God - Dr Zakir Naik
Dr. Zakir Naik explains the Quranic verse 'Walam yakul lahu kufuwan ahad,' which asserts that nothing can be compared to God. He argues that the moment any being can be compared to anything in the world, that being cannot be God. He presents this as a definitive four-line Quranic test for identifying the true God.
Summary
In this short clip, Dr. Zakir Naik discusses the final verse of Surah Al-Ikhlas from the Quran: 'Walam yakul lahu kufuwan ahad,' which translates to 'There is nothing like unto Him.' He presents this as the most stringent criterion for identifying the true God, arguing that incomparability is the ultimate divine attribute.
Dr. Naik illustrates the concept with a practical example: if someone were to describe God as being 'a thousand times stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger' — referencing Schwarzenegger's fame as a strongman and his titles of Mr. World and Mr. Universe — that description would immediately disqualify the candidate from being God. His point is that any comparative description, whether referencing strength, size, or any other attribute relative to worldly things, inherently limits and therefore invalidates the concept of God.
He extends this argument to include figures like Dara Singh and King Kong, and emphasizes that it does not matter whether the comparison is a thousand times or a million times greater — any comparison at all disqualifies the being from being God. He also briefly references Dajjal (the Antichrist in Islamic eschatology), noting that Dajjal resembles a common human being with one nose, one mouth, two eyes, and two hands, making him definitionally not God.
Dr. Naik concludes by framing Surah Al-Ikhlas as a four-line definition of Allah, and states that Muslims are open to accepting any candidate as God, provided that candidate fully satisfies this four-line definition — with incomparability being the decisive and non-negotiable criterion.
Key Insights
- Dr. Zakir Naik argues that 'Walam yakul lahu kufuwan ahad' is so stringent a criterion that no being other than the true almighty God can pass it, making incomparability the ultimate test of divinity.
- Naik uses Dajjal as an example of a being that cannot be God precisely because Dajjal shares human physical attributes — one nose, one mouth, two eyes, two hands — making him comparable to ordinary humans.
- Naik argues that describing God as 'a thousand times stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger' — referencing Schwarzenegger's titles of Mr. World and Mr. Universe — would disqualify that being from being God, because the comparison itself negates divine incomparability.
- Naik asserts that the scale of comparison is irrelevant — whether a being is described as a thousand times or a million times greater than something worldly, any comparison at all is sufficient to disqualify the being from being God.
- Naik presents Surah Al-Ikhlas as a four-line universal definition of Allah, and states that Muslims have no objection to accepting any candidate as God if that candidate fully satisfies all four lines of this definition.
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